Captain Dan bowls tight line on politics

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TIGHT LINE: In an exclusive extract from his biography, New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori reflects on the increasing politics of the sport.

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DANIEL VETTORI TURNING POINT
By Richard Boock
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The last time time we went to Zimbabwe - in 2005 - there was almost fury over us going. The Green Party were signing petitions and bringing Henry Olongo over here to speak about how wrong touring would be, and a lot of people just didn't want us to go. Our chief executive, Martin Snedden, was effectively forced to take a pro-tour stance because of the financial penalties that New Zealand Cricket would have suffered if we didn't tour.

We were trying to work through that while also being mindful of being consistent - because there were other countries that we play cricket against that didn't have fantastic human rights records, either. I think it was important to take that into account - the need for even-handedness. The ICC rules insisted we couldn't renege on our touring commitments on any grounds other than safety and security.

You can see the logic in this. There's a decent argument that if you start drifting away from that position, you'll end up with a very dysfunctional playing programme and make sides vulnerable to every sort of political movement possible. Teams would be pulling out of tours regularly, depending on international relationships at the time. There'd be tit-for-tat reprisals. Chaos.

Having said that, Zimbabwe is in a terrible state, and I'm not sure what the right answer is in terms of our sporting contacts. You can argue that we should be isolating them in order to show our disapproval of Robert Mugabe's regime, and that to continue sporting contact is, by implication, endorsing and condoning the current administration. You could, but from where I stand that's an exceptionally political and theoretical point of view.

On the other hand, there's a claim that we should continue to have sporting contacts with Zimbabwe, because to do so would effectively help to keep their national cricket team in existence and afford some opportunity for the local people, as well as keeping at least one channel of communication open with the free world.

The fear is that Zimbabwe, at least under the present regime, will become lost to reason - and that on its own is one decent incentive to keep the lines of contact open.

In terms of New Zealanders' general appreciation of Zimbabwe's plight, I reckon our cricketing partnership has already paid off.

Sure, there would have been many interested parties and lobby groups trying to raise the profile of the issue, but I think the Kiwi cricket link has put it in the minds and homes of the average punter.

You wonder whether the Greens would have received so much traction on the issue if it wasn't for the fact that we were scheduled to tour there.

Cricket has brought Zimbabwe to the New Zealand public's attention - it created a window through which we could watch and debate the topic, and make it relevant for us. It gave us a chance to take cameras and reporters, and with that the eyes of the world, into a place that's pretty well cut off in terms of scrutiny.

Is this such a bad thing? Certainly not. Is contact worth abandoning on the very subjective grounds that to do otherwise is to support Mugabe? Again, I doubt it somehow.

This is not appeasement. We've got enough information to understand that the outlook for millions of Zimbabweans is very bleak. I'm not making a political judgement; merely reflecting the reality of the situation.

The last time I looked, Zimbabwe's inflation was running at about 150,000%, well ahead of the 1500% of Iraq. Unemployment was estimated at 80%.

People talk about tragedy in sport - but these are the statistics of a real tragedy.

I CERTAINLY AGREE with the idea of making safety and security the only touring issue in most situations. But in saying that, we still have to be careful that we don't judge the world on the comparatively quiet standards of New Zealand. We live in a different place now. Bombs were going off in London during the 2005 Ashes, just as they were in the early 1980s. You hear of blasts in Cape Town, Mumbai, Colombo, Karachi - who knows where or when you're safe these days.

During our one-day series at home against England in 2007-08, a woman attacked the pilot of a commercial aircraft. It's the old story of not throwing stones if you live in a glasshouse. The stakes have been upped, certainly, but it's happened all over the world.

We were also pretty lucky - in the wake of 9/11 - to have such an understanding CEO as Martin Snedden; a very compassionate man when it came to players' needs and concerns, and a guy who made safety and security a non- negotiable issue for the New Zealand team. Sneds made it clear that if guys didn't want to tour a country because they felt unsafe, then no one would force them to tour - even if the team proceeded. That happened on a couple of occasions, as well. And when we toured Pakistan for the first time after the 2002 blast in Karachi, he made a point of coming with us. His stance was that, if it was good enough for the players then it was good enough for him as well.

Things have changed dramatically since 9/11 and particularly in terms of the security measures now taken. When I first toured India in 1999 we were basically allowed to wander around anywhere, apart from up north, which was having a few problems. Everywhere else you were just able to walk out the hotel front door and head off on your own reconnaissance.

After 9/11, though, everything became a lot more security-conscious, and you were always surrounded by armed police. I think countries are extremely aware that they can't afford to have anything unsafe happen, otherwise teams will stop touring.

That's just the way of the world now. I remember after we returned to Pakistan in 2003 we had about 2000 armed guards travelling with us most of the time. We couldn't get a pizza in the hotel because they were terrified that it might have been poisoned and therefore threw it away. You realise it's necessary but it can be quite overbearing, especially when you're in the hotel lobby with a young Pakistani male who's twirling his AK47 like a toy.